Hearing Fanny say that it is about 10 years from being ready, I think that I will probably steer clear of ZigBee until they have some more time to work out the kinks. Thank you again Fanny and Alex. Another great presentation.

re low power Wi-Fi and interference - yes - this would take care of the interference issues since Wi-fi has collision avoidance mechanism. Though in the 2.4 GHz band, there are a lot of devices that will just transmitt (e.g. analog phones and baby monitors), so you cannot win...

There is serious investment into NFC, but i wonder about alternaive radio technologies and whether something better than 13 MHz will eventually take over. The software stack for NFC will likely be a good investment for the long term.

re ZigBee and Bluetooth vs. low power Wi-Fi - there are a few low-power Wi-Fi solutions and they woudl also need to support meshing (802.11s) to be able to replace ZigBee and Bluetooth. In principle, Wi-Fi can achieve the same power consumption as ZigBee or Bluetooth if you slow down the data rate and lower the TX power. It's comparable radio technology.

Bluetooth 3.0 has the same reach as Wi-Fi when operating on the Wi-Fi radio... less than 200 feet for all practical purposes though marketing people will claim higher distances that may be achievable under special conditions (e.g. open field).

Regarding MIMO and multipath, you can also have multiple streams via line of site with no mulitpath if your antennas are cross polarized (i.e. orthoganal with respect to one another). There are other technues of decorrelating streams, for example Alamouti coding whereby the symbols are time offset.

FANNY: can you please elaborate on a comment you made to Alex of "readind through containers". As far as I know, containers are mostly made of steel, and thus will reflect fast radio waves. Aren't they?

Fanny,You have made the point several times that multi-path is required for MIMO to work. While I agree that overcoming the problems that multi-path causes is one of the strengths of MIMO, I don't understand multi-path being a requirement. Two transmitters at one place, connected to two separate receivers at another, each pair using a separate multi-path free RF path will provide twice the throughput of one alone. By extension, any symmetrical MIMO (2x2, 3x3, 4x4). For a single receiver receiving packets from two transmitters (non-symmetric MIMO, 3x2, 3x4, etc., and cross channel paths) the packets have to arrive at slightly different times, either caused by different RF path lengths (multi-path) or by delaying one of the transmitters. Perhaps the distinction should be made between multi-path and multiple RF paths.

Android (and iPhone, presumably) called Key Ring - reads store affinity cards (e.g. the bar code tags to attach to key rings) - works mostly; hard to scan sometimes, and the app is much slower than it originally was

Alex, are you sure that is not a barcode on the smartphone? I have seen at Starbucks people who have their Gold Cards on their phones hold it up to the bar code reader that is used to read barcodes on products.

@jl @Alex - Almost all of my postings show up fine. The symptom shows only every now and then. I have NO IS server between my workstation and the Internet, so I think the problem may be localized to Alex's end.

@Alex - I've answered most of your questions, but occasionally my postings don't show up. I wonder if your server is dropping some of the postings? This is not a new problem. I've noticed it during webinars past and have posted the observation previously. This might be why you are not seeing as many responses to your questions as you are expecting.

Okay, this is the first session in weeks that I'm here before it starts. Let's see if I don't have to refresh every five minutes. I love an IT department that knows what it's doing. Now if I can only find one....

@Alexander Wolfe: If I might make a suggestion re "Interruptions": I don't know how you get Fanny's audio stream, but if you both could keep a "private communication channel" open via some IM software like skype, you could "inaudibly" ping the lecturer to stop talking for your comments and questions. Then, ideally, lecturer would pause, you could talk, lecturer would respond and the audience would be amazed by the smooooooth flow.

The streaming audio player will appear on this web page when the show starts at 2pm eastern today. Note however that some companies block live audio streams. If when the show starts you don't hear any audio, try refreshing your browser.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

Focus on Fundamentals consists of 45-minute on-line classes that cover a host of technologies. You learn without leaving the comfort of your desk. All classes are taught by subject-matter experts and all are archived. So if you can't attend live, attend at your convenience.